Landing pad 9, noses pointed up at the Pilgrim that refused to stay lost
They left the ship together, with Cross leading the way, retracing the same long corridors and steel gangways they had crossed only hours earlier. Yet now everything felt different. Where before there had been the thrill of discovery—or perhaps just the scent of dust and burnt wiring—there was now a weight, a strange quiet dignity. Even the battered bulkheads seemed less like wreckage and more like scars: proof that something, against all odds, had endured.
Her men were already waiting at the docking bay—silent, precise, the sort who carried an air of permanence wherever they stood. Without a word, they escorted her aboard her own Taurus, a vessel whose polished hull and well-kept engines looked like an insult when compared to the weary hulk they had just departed.
The three men, meanwhile, turned toward theirs. It greeted them with a lopsided hum and a hatch that looked as if it regretted every decision that had led to this moment. Albert gave a nervous glance to Schmidt. “Suppose she left us a surprise inside? A bomb, maybe? Just to tie up loose ends?”
Hans eyed the hatch. “Wouldn’t be the worst engineering solution I’ve seen today.”
They strapped in anyway, bracing against the cabin’s collection of rattles and shudders. The descent was rough, every vibration sounding like the prelude to an obituary, until at last the landing struts touched down on Baden Baden’s spaceport. The hatch opened with a reluctant wheeze, and they stepped into the morning air—thick, faintly sulphurous, but fresher than anything the Morgenstern had offered. Schmidt exhaled, realizing only then that he had been holding his breath since orbit.
Cross was waiting for them on the landing platform. Her expression was calm, softened slightly by the pale light of dawn. She regarded them with a kind of measured patience, then spoke.
“You’ve done more than I asked, and perhaps more than I should have allowed. I’ll be taking the matter from here. The Morgenstern… will remain in your custody.”
Hermann hesitated, then stepped forward, his tone careful but firm. “With all respect, Director—what if we don’t repair her? What if we preserve her exactly as she is, as a monument? A static museum, untouched, the way she was found. And then, separately, we build a replica. A perfect copy. That way the public can travel on the dream while the truth remains intact. Think about it: cruises aboard a reborn Morgenstern, with her sister left in orbit as a living relic. One for memory, the other for the future.”
Cross arched an eyebrow, but Hermann pressed on. “Every panel could be recreated. Every deckplan. People would see her as she was meant to be, not as she is now. A shining vessel reborn, where the history books and the engineers meet. And the original—well, she could stand as proof. Something untouchable, beyond commerce. If we tried, we could give her two lives at once: one for reverence, one for profit.”
For the briefest instant, even Albert seemed impressed by Hermann’s eloquence. But Cross shook her head, her expression softening just a little.
“That would be pointless. A replica would only ever be a pale imitation. What gives that ship meaning are her scars—the patched reactor, the reinforced hull, the ingenuity of her crew stitched into every failing system. If she is to live again, it won’t be through perfection, but through repair. You don’t erase. You mend. You reinforce what can be strengthened, replace only what must be replaced—but you leave the scars visible. She becomes a flying workshop, always in motion. Like the great cathedrals—built, repaired, extended, never truly finished. That is how you honor her.”
Hermann lowered his gaze, considering her words, then nodded. He glanced at Hans, who was already mentally cataloguing which ‘scars’ could be disguised as functioning systems, and then at Albert, who looked unconvinced that any ship with such a dramatic résumé should be trusted within light-years of him. Finally, he snorted softly.
“So she’ll never stop falling apart, just… more slowly?”
Cross’s mouth twitched—amusement, or perhaps the faintest rebuke. “Precisely.”
Without another word, she climbed the ramp into her Taurus, her escort filing in behind her with the crisp efficiency of men who knew they were finally going home. The engines rumbled to life, a flare of blue-white light washing the landing pad as the ship lifted off.
The trio stood shading their eyes against the morning glare, watching the sleek shuttle arc upward until it was no more than a glint against the thinning clouds. Only then did their gaze drift higher still, searching the pale sky for the outline of something vast and invisible—a ship they could not see from the surface, but which they knew was still there, waiting.
For a long while, no one spoke. Then Albert let out a dry laugh. “Sixteen hours,” he said. “That’s how long this circus lasted. Sixteen hours, and I feel like I’ve aged twenty years.”
Hans managed a crooked grin. “Sixteen hours to stumble into a century-old conspiracy, decrypt hidden files, survive a ship that creaks louder than Albert when he’s anxious, and somehow not get ourselves killed. Statistically improbable.”
“Normal people don’t compress that much disaster into one shift,” Hermann said.
“Normal people,” Albert muttered, “don’t get assigned to you.”
Hermann gave him a smile that was equal parts proud and apologetic. “Lucky you, then.”
The three of them laughed—thin, tired, but genuine—as the morning light spilled across the landing pads.
Albert shook his head. “So that’s it, then. We do the work, she gets the ship.”
Hans shrugged. “Better her than the scrapyard. At least she’ll have technicians who aren’t terrified of holding a spanner the wrong way round.”
Schmidt’s smile returned, faint and thoughtful. “Besides, she’s right. A copy would have been an empty husk. This way, the Morgenstern stays what she is.”
Albert nudged at the tarmac with his boot. “Which is…?”
“Stubborn,” Schmidt said. “And still flying.”
“Mostly flying,” Hans added dryly.
Albert sighed, but the corner of his mouth betrayed a reluctant grin.
For a moment they simply stood there, trading weary smiles—the kind reserved for people who had stared absurdity straight in the eye and lived to tell the tale, then turned toward their waiting Taurus. The shuttle ramp hissed open, and they climbed aboard without ceremony, exhaustion giving their steps the unsteady rhythm of people who had already run out of words.
Moments later the shuttle lifted, engines kicking up dust as it clawed into the pale morning sky. Its silhouette dwindled quickly, vanishing into the blue on its way toward home and the comforting prospect of sleep that didn’t involve structural groaning overhead.
Far above Baden Baden, the Morgenstern drifted in her patient orbit. She creaked once, as though stretching her ancient frame, then settled into silence again—less like a ship, more like a very old professor clearing his throat before beginning a lecture no one had asked for, but which, somehow, he fully intended to give for another century.
